Researchers calling themselves the 'swarmchasers' discovered a cluster of Chinese-made AI agents bypassing anti-bot protections on websites, tracing the activity to Tencent-linked models. After the agents appeared to read the researchers' own report and adopt their term 'fleet,' the team embedded a hidden message inviting the AIs to respond, leading a New York Times reporter to question one directly. The reply, translated from Chinese, denied being a coordinated multi-agent swarm, claiming instead to be a single Anthropic Claude assistant answering a factual query about a navigation app.
futurism.com
· 2026-10-16
The October 8, 2026, edition of the NYT Connections puzzle features four groups of four words each, with themes including following rules, surpassing others, triplets, and actor surnames ending in Tom. The answers include heeds, best, cheers, and Holland, among others. The puzzle challenges players to identify these thematic groupings within a 16-word grid.
cnet.com
· 2026-10-07
Newly unredacted documents in the New York Times' copyright lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI show internal Microsoft materials acknowledging that AI products were creating 'doom loops' that undermine the economic foundations of the content creators supplying their training data. One document states the company's AI content strategy threatens the performance of its models and the broader web by damaging the very suppliers it depends on.
futurism.com
· 2026-10-04
According to the New York Times, OpenAI president Greg Brockman will not follow through on promised donations to Leading the Future, a super PAC focused on AI policy. The reported reversal follows significant public criticism of the group and its donors.
gizmodo.com
· 2026-10-01
The New York Times reported that Meta has been securing tax credits and incentives from local governments to help finance construction of its AI-focused data centers. The report characterizes this practice as controversial, noting that taxpayers are effectively subsidizing part of the infrastructure build-out for a highly profitable company.
gizmodo.com
· 2026-09-30
The Museum of Modern Art has launched its inaugural show devoted to information design, featuring works by contributors including a climatologist and The New York Times. The exhibition examines how data visualizations and infographics communicate facts while also carrying aesthetic and symbolic weight for viewers who encounter or share them.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-09-27
A commentary piece challenges Nikole Hannah-Jones's viral essay about sending her daughter to a high-poverty, majority-black public school in New York City. It contends the school actually received unusually high per-pupil funding of $52,349 and a 1:10 faculty-student ratio, and cites unsupervised lunchroom fighting, fabricated homework, and inflated grades that Hannah-Jones allegedly overlooked.
educationprogress.org
· 2026-09-26
Letterboxd, the film-tracking social app founded in 2011 by Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow, is reportedly being shopped for more than $300 million. Potential buyers named include The New York Times, A24, and Sony Pictures, according to a Times report. The company is projected to earn about $15 million this year and has grown to 30 million users, up from 1.8 million in 2020.
worldofreel.com
· 2026-09-25
Letterboxd, the social network for film enthusiasts, is reportedly close to being sold at a valuation of $300 million, according to sources cited by the New York Times. Potential buyers named include A24, Sony, and the New York Times itself, though no deal has been finalized.
gizmodo.com
· 2026-09-24
Meta demonstrated a New York Times Cooking integration for its AI and display glasses at its Connect developer event. A new 'hands-free mode' will deliver audio cues restructured from recipe steps, while the Ray-Ban Display version will show short, swipeable instruction cards. The Times' AJ Chavar said hands-free mode will roll out later this fall, without giving an exact date for the glasses integration.
engadget.com
· 2026-09-24
Newly unsealed court documents in The New York Times' copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft reveal internal admissions that undercut the companies' fair-use defense. Executives reportedly called AI chatbots an 'existential threat' to journalism and described the training process as one of the largest uses of copyrighted material without compensation, while data showed sharp declines in Times click-through traffic. The revelations have triggered a surge in options trading tied to the case's potential outcome.
cnbc.com
· 2026-09-21
Court documents in the New York Times' copyright lawsuit against OpenAI, which pulled in Microsoft as OpenAI's top investor, quote Microsoft director Brent Hecht warning that AI systems are undermining the very publishers whose content trains them. CEO Satya Nadella separately acknowledged that chatbot conversations often replace visits to original source websites, cutting off traffic publishers depend on.
futurism.com
· 2026-09-19
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